Hoping this fits, I feel it's a lesson everyone needs to hear if they don't know.
Once upon a time I was a retail manager. For my sins I was promoted to store manager of a location of my chain on a temporary basis to cover someone who was on leave. Got a decent pay increase and for the first time, I felt my hard work was paying off.
To be fair, I was green AF and looking back I wasn't ready. I made the mistake of being the Buddy Christ version of a store manager. My new boss, the district manager, made it clear I should make getting along with everyone my first priority. So I did. Or tried, my manager side did push back at things they weren't doing that they should have been, which didn't mix well with my initial approach. I botched things pretty good. But honestly, my failings as a leader are totally beside the point with the issue at hand.
On an auspicious Friday one of my hourly supervisors came to me and said “Hey I went a little over this week, should I just fix my time the usual way?” “Wha… What usual way?” “Oh you know, I only went over 40 by a couple of hours, so I'll just do a punch correction for today and punch in late some day next week.”
RECORD SCREECH
“So, if I'm hearing this right, you've worked 42 hours this week but feel that you need to hide it so that you don't get paid overtime?” “Uh, yeah, because we're not allowed to get overtime. It's okay, I don't mind, I just think of myself as being on salary.”
I went fucking nuclear.
By the time the dust settled, after hours on the phone with my boss, their boss, some VPs, and various representatives from HR, not to mention digging in the file cabinets, what happened was our paper payroll records were audited for this practice. It was easy to spot once you knew what to look for. Dozens of current and past employees (the ones they could still find, anyway) got quietly paid for their unpaid overtime. Everyone had to sign a paper saying they would accurately clock their hours and communicate with management if they were going over their scheduled shifts. I told my supervisors that if they were going over that I would rather take the hit for paying OT versus this bullshit, but that I would prefer they communicate with me if they were going over so we could make adjustments.
Eventually I stepped down into a regular manager role when the store manager came back. I was super uncomfortable with the situation at first. He got into some deep shit for it, but swore he didn't know it was that widespread of an issue, so he wasn't fired. After working for him for awhile I believed him, he was a great boss, and eventually told me I did the right thing and he didn't hold a grudge. I think someone else on the previous team convinced everyone to do what they were doing to keep the store under the radar. I have a good idea who it was, too, and to this day I'm still pissed they got away with it without consequences.
Moral of the story: wherever you work, whatever you do, DO NOT WORK OVERTIME FOR FREE. Stand firm and get paid for what you worked. If you go high enough you'll get paid, less the company decides they want to lose a lot more money. But don't think of it as costing the company money and causing them to lose financial goals. Think of it as taking what SHOULD have been yours in the first place, and fuck their poor financial planning!
I hate that a lot of managers don't have the integrity to do what I did. But I didn't care. The people come first, profits come second. To this day that is how I manage my teams. Much to their annoyance, honestly. “Make sure you log your time for answering my email while you were off!” “FUCK OFF, Fistbump!” It's good times.